Book Review - The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

Books read for my book club are decided on each June at our final meeting. The list comes home and gets lost in my computer files until, each month I drag it out and get the next book on my list. This book review is the final read for this season’s book club. Chosen last June, I had put it at the very back of my mind until time to read it. I didn’t finish it in time for book club, and so this review is late, but is was my very good fortune to have read it.

To put it mildly, I enjoyed this book. This biography and memoir is of a son’s experience as his mother is diagnosed, the many treatments and her death. At the books beginning, he tells his readers that the stories of his father, his sister and his brother are their’s to tell. And in retrospect, with the emotion involved in this experience, it would have been too big to even try to tell. Humour, kindness, joy and life are all in this biographical memoir.

Mary Anne Schwalbe dies of pancreatic cancer at age 75. Her second son, Will Schwalbe, reads through the last two years of her life with her.  Their book club was borne of their love of reading and of books, and the many long times in waiting rooms, and hospitals.  Should anyone think that that is all that happened in that two years, they would be wrong.  Mary Anne Schwalbe was a humanitarian, an organizer, a mother, a friend and this lovely memoir tells of an all around good person. Will Schwalbe tells not just of the discussion of the books that they read, but how his mother kept up her activities until she was truly unable to, despite the waiting rooms and hospitals. Before her activities with the outside world, Mary Anne Schwalbe, devoted time and attention to her family - her grandchildren, her husband, her children and their spouses, families that she had helped and, without fail, reading. She wrote letters, emails and made phone calls.

In all that time she and her son read books, recommended books to each other, developed their mother/son relationship and enjoyed life as it unravelled. Mary Anne Schwalbe often said that she was lucky. She always seemed to find balance in her life. Having worked in Darfur and in Afghanistan with families and children, she knew that she was lucky. Throughout the book, it was evident that they were a moneyed family, and knew many people, but she was very humbled by what she had ~ she knew that she was lucky.

“Still, one of the things I learned from Mom is this: 

Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; 

it’s the opposite of dyting.”

~ Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club

A Jumbled Non-Essay

I feel like writing an essay tonight,
words tumbling over themselves ~ but not lining up with any coherency.

My essay is something about stigma ~
Unforgiving stigma that pushes people aside
when their behaviour is erratic and frightening,
their intoxication is over the top.

I suppose I understand that ~
wanting to be protected from someone else’s unpredictable behaviour
I don’t like to be injured, whether by word or deed ~ actually I shrink from it.

‘Good’ behaviour apparently always warrants care and attention
‘Bad’  behaviour also warrants care and attention
but only warrants arms-length care and attention 
even after the ‘bad behaviour’ is gone ~
after intoxication is no longer in your face.

There is no humility in these thoughts of ours.
Merely an arrogance that dictates our own behaviour
So that certain individuals become lost in rules and regulations
Sitting still in a chair, on a sidewalk or couchsurfing into oblivion.

No, I guess I’ll not write an essay tonight.
Thoughts too jumbled and frustrated……….

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. 

Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

~ Marie Curie

A Humble Approach

Humour
Understanding
Modesty
Initiative
Legendary
Intuitive
Truthful
Yoda

“He is as full of valor as of kindness. Primcely in both.”

~ William Shakespeare,  Henry V

A Humble Story

Humiliation or humility. 
Understanding the difference can be quite confusing, however it was very important that he get it right on his essay! 
Mr. Samuels was pretty particular about words and meanings, not to mention spelling. 
Barry really would rather be out on the baseball diamond, but this essay was already late and would count on his standings to stay on the highschool baseball team. 
Late or not, disliking writing essays or not, missing dessert after dinner or not, baseball had been his life since he was old enough to swing a bat.  
Eventually, he learned that humiliation brings a loss of dignity, like when he got bullied; and humility equalizes everybody’s strengths - just like a well oiled baseball team.

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”

~ Socrates

A Picture of Relativity

Beneath a soft swath of high cloud ~
water gathers into rain for land and sea
bringing growth and hydration to us all

Upon a wide expanse of deep water ~
home to life swimming in shallow or in the depths
sustaining life’s chain from minnow to whale

An immense ship, humbled by cloud, sea and mount
pulls itself slowly towards port, thrumming on a glittering surface, 
echoing deep, bringing us goods, clothing and groceries while we watch the clouds go by.

 “The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to 

insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.”

~ Nicolaus Copernicus

Updating IslandInMotion Competition

Time for an update. I am a member of a fitness team at work. Our team has a rather odd name - goatstastegoodontoast. Just so you know, I was not involved in the choice of name! (apparently there’s a story behind the name).

I have kept up daily, some days better than others. Yesterday, including walking around Thetis Lake with my sons, I did just over two hours. Today, I did better: 159 minutes! I have just checked the team rankings and we are not really in the lead. We are kind of not really in the first 50 teams - of the total 150 teams. But I can say that we are no longer on the second page of the teams listed, but about 10 from the bottom of the first page (we were on the second page a couple of days before). But we are a humble team. We will continue to put our backs, feet and legs into building up our minutes.

I guess that we are still in the running, and swimming, and cycling, and pumping iron, and whatever other motion that we choose to participate in. It has been, and continues to be, fun and very challenging. I’ll keep on each day to keep myself in motion, paying special attention to my stop watch and counting the next step. (Don’t spread it around but the Pembroke Pulverizers are doing really well ~ they were our friends.)

“Nobody’s going to win all the time. On the highway 
of life you can’t always be in the fast lane.”

~ Haruki Murakami, 

What I Talk About While I’m Running

Mother's Day Essay

Mother’s Day is both satisfying and exciting for me. I remember my own mom, my very special 'second mom' and all the others that stepped in over many years in the mom role. 

Celebrating all parents ~ not just moms is so very important. The work of parenting is just that ~ work. However, never a chore, although there are days and times when it feels like it.  Only when we look at our kids from afar ~ either when they’re sleeping or when we can just watch them without them knowing it, does the 'chore' vanish as though it had never been there. There are too many times when a mom, tired and exhausted, will do that one more thing for their child ~ while they develop their independence. 

The independence that begins with the first step, the first day of school and all the other firsts that follow through the years. When they are a year older, with a year more of life experience when their brilliance shines through and they believe in themselves in a different way. Unfortunately, that belief can too easily dimmed. Our job as parents is to hold, share and support all the hurts and triumphs of the growing up, up and away. We do that job sometimes very badly, sometimes extremely well and most times just ok. 

All of that teaching, guiding, playing with and letting go while holding hearts close does not stop with adulthood, graduating from anything, moving far away or being involved in their own lives. Moms, and dad, humbled by their children’s knowledge, abilities and humanity, can more easily laugh and cry with them when the ups and downs of life roll onto their horizons.

“Your children need your presence more than your presents.”

~ Jess Jackson